The Real Treasure

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• August 18, 2025

An eccentric wilderness lover named Justin Posey (see Netflix docuseries “Gold & Greed”) buried a treasure worth millions in the American west following the footsteps of adventure enthusiast Forest Fenn after years of searching for Fenn’s treasure himself. (See also my previous blog Good Enough). Like Fenn’s quest, Posey wrote a book filled with clues, but the “map” is a cryptic poem. As a self identified pirate, my friend Katrina, aka “Pieces” easily got me hooked on hunt. We both spent hours researching and eventually decided to go boots on the ground (BOTG) to Montana, where we theorized the treasure was hidden. Spoiler alert, we did not find it and I remain a broke artist.

Thousands of people are looking for this treasure. I am 90% sure it’s in Montana, but some people have some solid theories about Utah and Wyoming. While some people are driven madder than a hatter with treasure fever, the majority of the people on the online forums seeking the fortune seem ever grateful for the push to go out into nature with loved ones and chase a mystery in a world increasingly void of wonder. It’s not uncommon for people to say the cliche, “the real treasure is the experience and time spent in the wild with friends.”

Having went on an impromptu trip to the West with Pieces and our buddy Mike who also decided to join us last minute, tired of the hustle of Brooklyn, I can tell you for sure the treasure isn’t time spent with friends. I see these assholes all the time! Where’s the gold? My life is a mess! 

I’m mostly kidding, of course. I love my friends. They are hilarious and almost as crazy as I am. I wouldn’t trade them for a million dollars. Maybe two million though (haha).

We flew into Bozeman, Montana on a Monday. Last year, I was in Bozeman opening for Jim Norton and was quite taken with Montana. It is a beautiful place and, I think, New Yorkers often forget just how big the country is. As a native New Yorker, I have a strong affinity for the city, Long Island, and the Catskills upstate. And while I could never live far from an ocean, it’s no mystery to me why people love the mountains and live in a slower paced environment, where, the people are far nicer than the folks in the Northeast.

We stayed in Dillon, because our solve was closest to there. There’s a bookstore in Dillon where Posey had a book signing. He has strong ties with the area and lots of people believe the treasure to be somewhere in the surrounding area. But as mentioned before, Montana is a big place. There are so many places the treasure could be.

Our first night, we just chilled and readied our hiking backpacks for the treasure hunt the following day. We’d have to go early, because by midday the temperature would be near 90 degrees, and not only is hiking not fun when it’s that hot, but extremely dangerous. We firmly believe the treasure is somewhere near Big Hole river, but the spot we checked was not only harder to access than we thought it would be, but void of any loot. We had to wade through two creeks to go “around the bend” of Big Hole, near an area where a forest fire left much of the trees charred, to a heart shaped clearing that aligned with a celestial map (did I mention that we are crazy?) and hiked for 90 minutes before deciding our solve was not the answer. Oh well.

We still had half the day, so we went to Bannack, a ghost town. The ol’ mining town was built in the 1860s. Most of the houses and buildings you can go into. It is an equally cool and haunting place that seems to live in time. Once upon a time, vigilantes ruled this town. Hangings were popular. My writer’s imagination unlocked with every door we opened, dreaming of the wild west.

Besides looking for treasure, one of the big reasons we went when we did as that we love the stars, and the Perseids meteor shower was peaking that night. I had found an observatory not far from where we were staying and rallied my crew to go there for the celestial show. I rarely miss the Perseids shower. Even on the beaches of Long Island, where the light pollution from Manhattan is pretty bad, I’ve seen meteors with giant colorful tales streak across the sky every few minutes. Pieces and I have twice driven to Cherry Springs (PA) for a clear view of the Milky Way, where you can see satellites and shooting stars at every glance. Cherry Springs is a magical place.

So, we are driving to this “observatory” which had some good reviews. But the closer we got, it just looked like a house on a hill, with abandoned cars including dozens of mustangs and corvettes. Two dogs came out barking. It didn’t look like an observatory. It really just looked like someone’s house. There was a woman on a small porch on the second floor who told us it WAS an observatory, despite there being no telescopes or even a clearing to watch the sky. The woman called in the barking dogs. We could see a man, shirtless, in the window upstairs. He put a shirt on, turned off the light and disappeared. There was an old man in a rocking chair in the living room we could see through the window, who did nothing but rock. Very quickly, this was starting to feel like a horror movie. An old house. A lot of abandoned cars. Barking dogs. Mysterious people. An old man in a rocking chair that I wasn’t convinced wasn’t some sort of “Psycho” scenario. The whole situation made us uneasy, and we tailed out of there.

We ended up driving to Beaverhead mountain, a very cool spot where many people also think the treasure may be near. Even though it was extremely dark, there was some cloud coverage that nights we only saw maybe a dozen meteors. Though I get giddy like a child every time I see a good one. I wished we would find treasure, or that I’d get a full time writing job, or that someone would buy  one of my screenplays. I can’t tell you which of these dreams are least likely, because they are seem as far away as a rock burning up in the atmosphere.

Last year when I was in Montana, I sorely regretted not going to Yellowstone. Though over a two hour drive from where we were staying, Pieces also agreed she wanted to visit the legendary national park, and Mike, having been a tagalong on this trip, didn’t have much of an option at that point. So, again, we got up early, drove by one more spot we theorized the treasure could be, and then headed to Yellowstone (the treasure is not located in any park you need to pay to go in).

Yellowstone did not disappoint. It is wilderness and beauty on an epic scale. Though we only covered about half the park, we got to see boiling sulfur hot springs, old faithful erupt, giant water falls, hundreds of bison and we even got lucky enough to see a family of four grizzly bears. Pictures hardly do the place justice, just as I feel, even as a writer, I cannot really put the natural majesty of such a place into words. It was a long day of driving and exploring but we were enthralled by the park (thank you, Roosevelt!), filled with jaw dropping moments and lots of laughs.

On our way back, we stopped at a natural hot springs to soak our tired bodies. It got to talking to some strangers, all of whom had been to the park (some for several days) and none of them saw bears. “We saw four bears,” I told them. You should have seen how wide eyed these people got. They were pressing me on the location (I wasn’t sure), treating me like a celebrity because of our bear encounter. I mean, they were about 200 feet from the road. We got lucky, I guess. We had nearly a three hour drive back to Dillon, but the big sky melted in the horizon with pastel colors as stars slowly and surely shone through. I even saw a couple more meteors that night.

The went back to New York the following day, but not before visiting the Museum of the Rockies, where, they have the most complete T-Rex skeleton in the world (90% complete!). Many of the dinosaur fossils there were found in places were passed or were hiking. Which is pretty mind blowing in itself. I’d be equally stoked to find the head of triceratops as I would gold.

It was a quick two and a half non stop days. Though I’m glad we made a pass at finding the treasure, the best part was by far going to Yellowstone. I’d love to return one day and spend a few days there. I’m really happy we went BOTG and made forever memories. Thanks, Justin, for that.

The real treasure was not gold, empty halls of abandoned towns, or prestigious mountains, but rather not getting murdered at that observatory. So we lived another day to tell this tale. And not getting murdered or dying of dysentery on the Oregon trail is pretty great. Because you never know what adventures await you in the future. And as someone who’s just recovered from a broken foot, the main thing you learn from being injured or sick is to take advantage of the times you’re healthy. Life is as short as Yellowstone is massive. Overlooking this one valley, the thunderous sound of the pouring waterfall drowns out all the bullshit in the world. It’s a perfect view. It doesn’t even look real. And yet it’s the realest thing you’ve ever seen. What a country. What a world. What a planet to be a passenger on. Of all the stars and planets for light-years and light-years away that we know of, no place is special like Earth. I pocket the notion. This planet is a gem. This whole planet is a treasure.